The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-07-09
EPITAPHS.

"Our ancestors seem to have reserved
their witticisms principally for tomb
stones and funerals" says a writer who
has made thorough study of the early
literature of our country. A visit to old
burial places, with the quaint and curious
inscriptions upon many Of the earliest
slabs, suggests the truth of the writer
statement. When America was in the
infancy of her literature, the poetical
part of it consisted almo st entirely Of
eulogy. This found most frequent ex-
preston in elegies and epitaphs. Family
history and genealogy we're often united
with an exaggeration OF virtues, inter-
mingled with personal peculiarities.
These, with variety Of puns and a fire.
quent play upon words and sounds, made
an agreeable epitaph two hundred years
ago. If, from the Spirit-land, departed
ores could have looked upon the marble
slabs that marked their burial places,
doubtless very few would recognize them
selves as the original possessors OF SO
many virtues and peculiarities as were
ascribed to them. Sometimes, however
the rigid truth was told, regardless OF lit
erary flourish or exaggerstion Of praise,
as in the following epitaph of an early
divine:
Under this stone lies Richard Mather,
Who had a son greater than his father.
fI,ova off
But oftener there was tendency to
extreme eulogy, in which the most elab-
crate rhetoric was employed, especially
if the epitaph was for magistrate or
minister. The tom, stone of John Rogers
illustrates this redundancy of words and
hyperbolic praise, in asserting him to
have been
treasury of benevolence, a storehouse of
theological learning a library of the choicest
literature, living system of medicine, an en-
bodiment of integrity, repository of faith,
pattern of Christian sympathy, garner of
all virtues.
No wonder that John Rogers died !
Such an accumulation Of graces and wis
dom would make an angel of any man.
More than two centuries ago, at the
death of Jonathan Mitchell, popular
minister of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
the following epitaph was composed:
Here lies the darling of his time,
Mitchell expired in his prime;
Was four years short of forty-seven,
Was found full ripe and plucked for heavens:
Was full of prudent zeal and love,
Truth, patience wisdom from above;
New England's stay, next ages story,
The church's gem, the college glory,
Angels.may speak him, oh, not |,
Whose worth's above hyperbole;
But for our loss, vert in our power,
I'd weep an everlasting shower.
The tendency to pun the names Of the
dead is forcibly seen in an extract from
an epitaph which Mr.. Green wrote upon
himself, it being not uncommon, one and
two centuries ago, for men to write their
own epitaphs:
Summer and winter Green was he,
Most like the noble olive tree,
His masters work he did so ply,
He did but just get time to die.
1t is said that when Benjamin Frank
lin was twenty years of age he wrote his
epitaph, thus:
The Body
OF
Benjamin Franklin,
Printer,
like the cover of an old book,
Its contents here torn out,
And stript of its lettering and gilding)
Lies here, food for worms,
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will, as he believes, appear once more.
In anew
And more beautiful edition
Corrected and amended
By
The Author.
This does not appear upon the slab that
covers Franklin's grave, as those will re-
member who have visited it. 1t is not
necessary. Benjamin Franklin's life work
is his most enduring monument and his
truest epitaph.
The taste of the early American people
for their peculiar style of eulogy, was
evidently inherited from the mother coun-
try. On the tombstone Of a London